My name is Adhitya Kamakshidasan and I am in my Senior Year at the National Institute of Technology, Nagpur. I will be working on the Google Summer of Code 2015 project “3D Connection Maps” under the able guidance of Professor Benno Schmidt and Christian Danowski (both Hochschule Bochum).

It is difficult to find tools to set-up thematic maps showing connections or dependencies between different spatial features (e.g., good imports/exports of the World’s countries, flight connections between airports, or chat contacts between Internet users). This project aims to bridge this gap and make a module as a part of the new ‘WorldViz’ framework, which is based on the existing 52°North Triturus. It will use Java and X3D / X3DOM.

The main objective of this project is to provide better thematic representations of graphs in 3D-space based on real life scenarios. For example, we would like to plot a directed graph, which shows the various connections between countries based on their trade volume onto a 3-dimensional map. Another example is to plot airplane routes on a worldwide map. All this generally would take a lot of time. The main aim of this project is to simplify such tasks.

To achieve this, we will use Pajek.Net files as an input. These files will contain the raw data about the connection map. An XML document will specify cartographic scene design for our connections, e.g. how to represent various objects (vertices, edges, annotations, arrows and all other representation tools that help in aesthetic cartographic design).

Furthermore, the module will generate an X3D/X3DOM scene which can be displayed in a Web-browser. We would like the user to manipulate the created scene by clicking on a node, changing the viewpoint, zooming and so on. This would make user interaction much more customizable.

At the end of the project, we would look towards representation of connection maps in a beautiful manner on Google Earth, by using the KML format.

You can follow the progress of this project here.